My "Divided States" setting: plausible scenario or strawman political?

It's less how you get to the "Divided States" setting, and more how the Divided States is, from what I can tell from the OP's posts, apparently set up.

You have the Heartland, which is honestly fairly confusing considering that it seemingly effortlessly conquers everything that isn't on the East Coast or directly east of the Rockies. And then you put it as weirdly redundant when you have Deseret (and the idea of one conservative religious based country that somehow spans such a wide area, never mind two, is in and out of itself something that's rather implausable). And if Deseret is some sort of a subversion of Heartland, then what's even the point of Deseret other than a mismatch of confusing themes going generally nowhere?

Then you have the East and West coasts, and while there's not much that's said on them there's a very fine line between creating two takes on the same idea and basically creating one blatantly "good" country and one blatantly "bad" country, which effectively makes the moral of any story using said setting "be good country, don't be bad countries", which is fairly one dimensional for (technically) international politics.

I've been watching this conversation from the sidelines mostly because I haven't had anything to add. But now I do.

First thing to think about, as far as borders go: Consider that the United States is more-or-less made up of eleven different "nations," or regional mindsets, and know that any plausible Divided States scenario will ultimately fall close to those lines.

Second: Yes, I can get behind the idea of Tea-Party-types seizing power and diverting taxes. But at the moment I doubt the Mormons would change their tune that quickly,^note but I could be wrong, since I don't have much experience with the LDS church outside of internet research so you'll have to find a reason for them to suddenly distrust the rest of the country, and/or vice-versa.

Third, as others have pointed out, is to think about how Canada and Mexico would react. Culturally speaking, Mexico has a north-south divide,^note Link doesn't say much about it, but I don't have a better one on hand and Canada — as shown in that Eleven Nations link above — has at least five distinct cultural regions of its own. So do they follow the United States' lead and balkanize? Or does it become a minor Invaded States of America situation, where they try to gain power?^note Keep in mind that Mexico has a small-but-sizable Reconquista movement, and the US and Canada spent their early years in a bitter rivalry.

So yeah. If you're aiming for plausibility, those are my suggestions.

edited 25th Oct '15 5:09:50 PM by AwSamWeston

On a related note, I have a divided states setting of my own where the US gets itself into a huge civil war, with its origins tied to a debt default in 2013. Which regions would likely suffer the least and group up to form the least casualties? I'm guessing places like Appalachia, rural Texas and Alaska, and so on?

Unless Canada becomes no longer part of the British Commonwealth, what reason would they have to just straight up invade? Because I'm pretty sure they would need to take the input of Britain. So basically you'd have to decide if Canada was still part of its own major alliances that it's been in for decades.

There's also the fact that anything that would actually dissolve the United States as a family would have had to have a massive effect on the rest of the world. It wouldn't just be the US that got balkanized. Other countries might not even be able to do anything other than help their immediate neighbors. If they do hold together, then they'd probably be interested in helping America hold together/reuinite into something resembling is former self.

Thinking of terms in least casualties is probably the wrong way to think about this problem. Our actual Civil War is noted to have killed far more Americans than the World Wars we took part in.

edited 31st Oct '15 5:01:48 PM by AceofSpades

Thanks, that's a good point. My general point is which areas would survive a collapse of the government, especially one as violent as a civil war? I picked the most isolated areas of Alaska and Texas because large parts of them are already less dependent of the US government, but I forgot about infrastructure and refugees. I would guess the midwest would be swamped with refugees and without government assistance, the roads in many parts of alaska would quickly become unmanageable. So what areas remain?

Texas is the only continental state to have its own power grid. East and West are interconnected. However, this is not the same for things like roads, waterways, and various other things. All that shit is interconnected, as is our economy. Infrastructure also relies on having the manpower and resources to keep these things running. What you should consider is how badly depleted the population is, whether or not they expended enough effort on guarding power sources (such as the Hoover Dam) and training people to keep that shit running.

Also, how extensive is this collapse? Our military is integrated; state guards don't do much and tend to serve as reserves, I think. Which leads into what period you're covering with this scenario: has it been some years since the collapse, in which case a lot of locals would have formed their own militias, or is it at the beginning where our national military would still be national?

Also, I'd suggest you take a good look at taxes paid versus social services used; many states in the South, and I can't remember if Texas is included in this, end up taking a lot more money in social services than they pay in taxes. They are hugely dependent on the federal government, more than many in their state governments would like. (this is something that they like to pretend isn't true.) A governmental collapse would send large portions of the South into a tailspin, and I don't think Texas would necessarily get out unscathed from that.

edited 31st Oct '15 6:04:13 PM by AceofSpades

It's very vaguely sketched out, but my story takes place in the thick of the civil war, where noone's really sure if it'll slow down or go nuts. There's a gap between the debt default and when the government finally collapses where things become increasingly dire and more people are fed up with the government's incompetence, so there are the beginnings of militias and factions even before people start dying. Texas is actually one of the best places for people in a divided states scenario, I think. If I remember correctly it does pay more to the government than it gets back, it has its own power grid and I think water lines as well. There's also a pretty high gun ownership rate so they might even be able to fend off refugees from the southeast and east coast.

As a native Texan I'm just all kinds of skeptical about the idea that Texas would be the best place, or that it would necessarily be left unscathed. (basically I don't buy into Texas is the greatest! type of myths.) Now, the idea that Texas makes out the best appeals to my love of my state, I won't lie, but there's tons of factors that could lead to its collapse as surely as any other place would collapse. It does have the advantage, again, of having its own electrical power grid contained within state borders and having a diverse ecology, but there's tons of complaints about state government I could make. (Basically I do not think the current Republican stranglehold is all the competent or in any way good since they keep doing things like defunding healthcare, but this would probably be put on the backburner in the case of a genuine civil war with "we're at war are you really going to focus on this right now? Basically I'm wondering how a state government could necessarily be judged to be any more competent than the federal because they're composed of largely the same people/groups in real life. Ted Cruz, for example, was the Solicitor General of Texas before he ran for federal office.)

And it does indeed have access to waterways, but two of the biggest are also used as border lines with other states and Mexico. Frankly, if the US is falling apart, there might be a lot of refugees trying to get into Mexico and using Texas as the way to get there, in ironic reversal.

Oh, and that high gun ownership? Has absolutely nothing to do with a state's ability to fend off refugees or invaders (and I could give you a good long angry rant about that idea for SEVERAL reasons not related to writing a story) if they're not actually organized into a coherent military force. Otherwise they're just a bunch of scared and angry people with guns just as liable to shoot their neighbors over shit as they are refugees. And/or local militias in no way prepared to defend anything bigger than their local township.

Heavily armed does not actually mean well prepared or well trained.

Edit: Actually now that I read your post over again, how exactly does debt default lead to the government collapsing? That's a cause and effect you're going to have to explain in a way that makes sense in your story or a lot of people are going to have their suspension of disbelief badly broken. A debt default doesn't seem like it'd necessarily lead to everything breaking down. Plus I just don't see how the state governments could hold together very well with the federal breaking down, even our government is much more tightly tied together now than it was in the 1860s.

edited 3rd Nov '15 5:13:10 PM by AceofSpades

That reminds me: You may have heard of the myth that Texas can divide itself into multiple states if it wants to. I'm not sure if it's true, but that's beside the point: What is true is that Texas is nowhere near politically homogeneous. For example, here's a map◊ from my own Divided States project,^note which I try to keep as accurate as possible with the information I have with modern borders overlaid.

You'll find that's true of a lot of states to the west for these reasons: Political divides tend to be between urban and rural more often than not, and a lot of the bigger states had lines drawn so as to ensure diversified economies and access to certain resources back when their borders were negotiated. This has resulted in a lot of the states with significant populations having very different cultures. Unless you're like South Dakota, in which case you appear to be populated by ghosts and tourists to Mt. Rushmore.

Actually, even the Dakotas have an east-west divide along the Missouri River. And I'm aware of that for many other states as well, like Washington, Oregon, Idaho... That's part of how I informed the borders in my own Divided States setting, and why I linked that image in the first place.

In any case, brush up on all the geopolitical movements in the continent. Especially the ones that involve dividing a state. You'll end up with borders that are way more accurate. In addition to that Eleven nations link from before, here are a few more to get you started.

edited 4th Nov '15 4:47:38 PM by AwSamWeston

The debt default doesn't directly result in the government collapsing so much as the economic crisis that would come with a US debt default destabilizing things, plus a severe dip in trust of the government. Also thanks for the points, I'm not a native of Texas so it's good to hear it from the context of someone who knows what goes on there without all the TEXAS STRONK bias

Well, I was joking with the whole ghosts thing, but thanks?

I'm a regular participant in the OTC thread on US politics so uh... yeah, I have my own biases. Mostly informed by not liking what my current state government is doing and looking askance at any and all folks who say having a gun can somehow confer upon you the ability to turn away those actually trained in warfare. (I don't hold much faith in the intelligence of modern day secessionists.)

But seriously, every time I hear about the US collapsing, my mind just goes to what other countries might do, because it's not actually good for the rest of the world. You might, in fact, end up with large parts of the country having occupying foreign powers trying to impose some sort of order. UN/NATO intervention and the like. Canada trying to keep order because as their nearest neighbor us collapsing means nothing good for them. We're pretty well embedded in the affairs of the rest of the world, so what, exactly, is the rest of the worlds reaction to this? This may lend all sorts of problems to your writing, but it could also open up possibilities you maybe hadn't considered before.

Yeah, I actually want to focus on the impact on other countries to a large extent, particularly china. Part of the inspiration for using a debt default and economic failure comes from how many fascist regimes came to power during the great depression, and with no major players like the US, China, and so on to stop them they'd develop more easily in this scenario.